Collapse; how societies choose to fail or survive.
Jared Diamond, Penguin Books.

What was going through the head of the man who chopped down the last tree on Easter Island?
Had he been reflective he would have realised that there would be no more fishing boats with a famine that would reduce the stone statue civilisation to a small band of cannibals.

This book traces many historic civilisations. Some of which have destroyed their environment through exploitation ( see Dirt review ) Other island cultures have preserved trees, valued wildlife and limited human reproduction and have thrived from millennia. The collapse of the Greenland Norse and Maya civilisations are well told.

One illustration of the book’s title is provided on the single island that makes up Haiti and the Dominican Republic. One side has deforestation, topsoil erosion and corruption whilst the other maintains forests and farmland.

The final chapters look at the choices facing the western economies. To scale back on expansion and live quietly within environmental limits, maintaining soil and trees in stable low carbon communities, or to continue headlong with increased growth and exploitation over the cliff of peak oil and climate change.

Planetwise
Intervarsity Press. Dave Bookless

UK leader for international La Rocha movement.
A biblical case for caring for the planet God made for his glory and people’s enjoyment.

Affluenza – an all consuming epidemic.
John de Graaf, David Wann, Thomas Naylor. Berrett-Koehler Publishers Inc

This is an easy and entertaining read with short chapters and illustrations.

A telling picture on the inside front page has an American family and an Indian family , each on their front drive with all their possessions. A few pans, a bike and water containers in the east with a shop full of consumer goods and cars in the US.

The book takes notions of conspicuous consumption and the leisure class from Veblen or Galbraith’s affluent society and puts the concepts in a much more digestible format. The innovation from these authors is to use disease concepts and treat the behavioural characteristics as a disease. Thus it is a highly infectious contagion that spreads through advertising and leads to depression, misery , broken relationships and bankruptcy. The increasing wealth that is displayed does not lead to lasting happiness as there is always something better that could have been bought or a new product. So we have people buying things they do not need, with money they do not have to impress people they do not like. This is destroying individuals and communities. The raw materials needed to maintain it and the carbon emissions are also destroying the planet, even for those who are not invited to the party.

The solutions section included being actively cynical about advertising, “buying nothing” days, moving at a slower pace of life, downsizing to get out of debt and living more simply.

The Web of Debt.
Ellen Hodgson. Third Millennium Press.

“Let me issue and control a nation’s money and I care not who writes its laws” Nathan Rothshild.1838. This book looks at the creation of money and the central bank systems. Many assume they are government run for the public benefit and are noble institutions. Few realise they are private corporations with money making directors.
The structure of the book recaps on the historical origins of paper money and bank lending. It uses as a theme the “Wizard of Oz” story, seeing this as an allegorical tale on banking by a newspaper editor who could not criticise capitalism directly for fear of losing his job. Thus the wicked witches of the east and west are the banking institutions. Emerald city is green with bank notes. The wizard bewitches with bluster but has no real power. The straw man is the agricultural worker and the tin man the factory hand, both robbed of dignity and strength by the system. The lion a weak polititian and the red ( silver ) shoes an alternative to the gold standard of the time.

The central theme is summed up in a quote on page 2 from Sir Josiah Stamp, Director of the Bank of England 1927. “The modern banking system manufactures money out of nothing. The process is perhaps the most astounding piece of sleight-of-hand that was ever invented. Banking was conceived in inequity and born in sin… But if you want to continue to be slaves of the bankers and pay the cost of your own slavery, then let the bankers continue to create money and control credit .”

The answer from Henry Ford is for the governments to manage their own debts and print their own money. This could mean a government without taxes or a national debt according to this book.

The Coming First World Debt Crisis.
Ann Pettifor, Palgrave Macmilllan.

This book was written in 2006 and is therefore prophetic. It comes from an author who was a co founder of Jubilee 2000 which campaigned for third world debt relief. She recaps on the recent decades when the 1970s oil crisis resulted in petrodollars being deposited into western banks then recycled into loans to poor countries. All was well until interest rates rose and the loans had been squandered or laundered by the elites. Then the populations had their health and educational services decimated and fees imposed so private corporations can profit, by the International Monetary Fund structural adjustment programmes. This is widely known.

The innovation from the book was to predict exactly the same dynamic would take place in the first world. The conjuring trick whereby money is created by the act of a person taking on a debt through the fractional reserve banking system is recapped. ( see the film “Money as Debt” for an easy introduction to this concept on youtube) .

So mortgages have been taken out in a lending spree and second homes have been as sure fire hit. Bankers bonuses have fuelled the lending and complex debt derivatives had temporarily masked the bad debt.

The solution is to move to a different economic and banking model. The book looks back beyond the 500year dominance of western civilisation by a debt system. It looks at old testament injunctions against usury and their operation in the first millennium AD. The Islamic system that also prohibits debt is also explored.

Dirt – the erosion of civilisations.
David. R. Montgomery. University of California Press.

This book is American thus the dirt in the title, the English equivalent would be “soil”. This makes the case that the history of many major civilisations has in fact been the history of their topsoil. Thus tribes grow in numbers on fertile flood plains then invade neighbouring tribes. A city system then grows and expands with increasing food harvests whilst no one notices the slow loss of topsoil. Pressure of population needs means that marginal land on hillsides is moved into food production. This works well for a time but steep slopes once ploughed are quickly denuded of friable earth leaving bedrock. At this point of maximal growth the civilisation collapses if it has no new territories to plunder. This mechanism is plotted through Greece, Roman, Mayan and Easter Island cultures.
Now the same scenario faces western civilisation. We have depended on the rich grain baskets of the Ukraine and Midwestern American states with their deep post glacial loam. This is eroding and losing depth. In England the same is seen in East Anglia where soil is blown away. So peak soil also threatens the collapse of a complex society, alongside peak oil.
Finally the book offers a solution of enriching the soil. The incorporation of all human waste back into the field ecosystems may cause some to squirm but it would be natural. Topsoil must be looked after and valued as the Soil Association maintains. A sustainable future within environmental limits extends to our relationship with the earth, literally.

The Upside of Down.
Souvenir press, Thomas Homer-Dixon.

Catastrophe, creativity and the renewal of civilisation. This book looks at past collapses of civilisations such as the Roman empire. In Dorset we can still see the evidence in the straight road from Weymouth to Dorchester with its amphitheatre and square walls that are now south walks. This civilisation collapsed when it lost its topsoil and that of its North African colonial bread basket. The book predicts that politics, science and economics point to another crisis point for this civilisation. However the future low carbon economy could be an improvement. This would be the upside of down.